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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27669436">Six Feet Deep</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoWithTheFlo20/pseuds/GoWithTheFlo20'>GoWithTheFlo20</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Girl-Who-Lived (Harry Potter), Harry Potter is Bad at Feelings, Harry Potter is So Done, Harry Potter is a Little Shit, Harry Potter's Quirk Brings All The Villains To The Yard, Kinks galore, Master of Death Harry Potter, Morally Grey Harry Potter, Other - Freeform, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Overpowered Harry Potter, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Quirk Kink (My Hero Academia), Smut, but mainly porn, when she wants to be</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:20:24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,275</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27669436</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoWithTheFlo20/pseuds/GoWithTheFlo20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>On the run after an incident Hemlock Potter only thinks of as Ward 13, she ends up in a little place called Musutafu trying desperately to keep her head down, out of trouble, doing what little she could where she can. It wasn't much of a life, but it was something, and perhaps more than she deserved. Then she finds a man dying in an alleyway, and helps the only way she knew how, and kicks of a storm of unprecedented proportions. </p><p>Or:</p><p>The one where Hemlock Potter has an overpowered Quirk that brings all the Villains to the yard. That's it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dabi (My Hero Academia)/Harry Potter, Harry Potter/Kurogiri, Harry Potter/Mr Compress, Harry Potter/Shigaraki Tomura | Shimura Tenko, Harry Potter/Stain, Harry Potter/Toga Himiko, Harry Potter/Twice</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>361</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Match Made In A Mausoleum.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>It was early in the morning, and the machineries padding the back behind the till of the coffee shop were yet to be warmed up. Hemlock Potter stood at the counter, still in her scrubs from the night-shift, pondering a moment longer, sipping in the bitter-sweet scent of this place so far from home.</p><p>The barista behind the checkout had weary eyes, bounded by a pallid lavender bruise. Hidden in the hazel was a glimmer, a give-away mark of a good heart, a lasting spark.</p><p>It wouldn’t help her in the end, this tired woman with Himari sprawled across a wonky name tag.</p><p>She would be dead three months from now, lungs withered from cancer.</p><p>She would die alone in a hospital bed, no one there to see her through those final rattling breathes that would <em>burn</em>. Her mother would be stuck on a business trip. Her father died several years before. She would be buried next to him four months from this very day. The funeral would be pitifully small.</p><p>It seemed tired-Himari wasn’t one for friendship.</p><p>She would regret that intensely in the end.</p><p>Hemlock knew all this.</p><p>She <em>saw </em>all this.</p><p>“One danish pastry and a three-shot espresso for a Miss Potter?”</p><p>The tray holding a steaming cup and white plate was held out with two hands. Himari must have started to notice her lack of strength. However, she was dismissing it as being over-worked. A mistake she wouldn't live long to regret. Hemlock took it between her gloved hands, <em>always gloved hands,</em> and Hemlock lingered a moment more still.</p><p>“You should ring your brother. He wants it as much as you do but can’t bring himself to pick up the phone. He thinks you're going to hang up before he so much as says hello.”</p><p>Hemlock’s Japanese was stilted, poor, from misuse or unuse is uncertain, but the point was translated well enough she supposes as the barista frowned deeply over those tired-eyes, spluttering a breath that would become bloody in the next few weeks.</p><p>Hemlock said no more.</p><p>She turned, and she made her way to a table at the far back of the coffee shop, out of the way, <em>far </em>out of the way. The only place Hemlock Potter should ever be.</p><p>Removed from the rest.</p><p>The scene in her mind changed.</p><p>Himari was no longer alone in a white starched bed.</p><p>Her brother is there, on a chair beside the heart monitor, a chair that squeaks when it moves over the linoleum, to hold her hand and see her through the dark one last time.</p><p>Himari isn’t so scared then.</p><p>The death comes easier, quicker, <em>softer. </em></p><p>It was the best Hemlock could do right then. The <em>only</em> thing she <em>should </em>do, she told herself. This gift of hers was terrible, terrifying, totally rotten. More than just seeing how, when, and why people would die, she could-… <em>Well. </em></p><p>She could do terrible, terrible things.</p><p>When you had the power of Death at your fingertips, all it’s gnawed bones and burial blossoms, you learnt quickly to stay away from people as much as possible.</p><p>And that was what Hemlock had spent the last two years doing, the last ten months since her freedom, since she arose from her own death at the Battle of Hogwarts, awoke in a dimly lit hospital room with nurses talking about a 'late-onset Quirk'. Was it late-onset? People had been dying around Hemlock since she was born, after all.</p><p>Hemlock Potter had never heard of a 'Quirk' before that day. She wouldn't have, though, would she? No. Children with 'Quirks' in England were put into the Wards long before they got their Hogwarts letters, long before they could cause too much damage, the worst of the worst buried in Ward 13 where Hemlock-</p><p>
  <em>Don't think about it. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Running. </em>
</p><p>Running from seeing Hermione die at age fifty from a heart attack. Running from seeing Ron die at twenty-three from an Auror mission gone awry. Two years from now, McGonagall was going to fall to a flooing accident. Andromeda’s death was only twelve months from Tuesday, a burst stomach ulcer that would go gangrenous. Her trip to Saint Mungo’s would be six hours too late.</p><p>
  <em>Too late. </em>
</p><p>Hemlock had tried to change it, all those deaths she saw, in the beginning.</p><p>She had only made it ten times worse.</p><p>Death, for those not herself, could not be cheated for long, and it hated to wait. The worst kind of customer to service.</p><p>It made you pay for the extra months Hemlock fought for.</p><p>Hemlock got another decade for Ron but indecently added a werewolf attack. It would be a sluggish death, more raw, he would linger between this world and the next for three days in Saint Mungo’s, sobbing at the pain of a torn to shreds form. She got another five years for Hermione, but her dear friend would not thank her for it. Not with all the tubes and potions that would be force-fed into her mouth by the end.</p><p>Hermione would curse Hemlock with her final breath.</p><p>They all would, eventually.</p><p>It was hard to keep friends when you knew how transient they were and you, horribly, were <em>not.</em></p><p>After the accident of Ward 13, where Hemlock had decimated-</p><p>After the accident she never spoke of, Hemlock ran, and she had been running ever since.</p><p>It was safer this way.</p><p>Safer for everybody.</p><p>You don’t play with Death, and Death, as much as it wanted it, wanted it so bad it hurt, couldn’t play at being human for long.</p><p>She did her bit, however, wherever she could, however she <em>should </em>do it. Hemlock, anyplace she went, made Death a little <em>softer. </em></p><p>She told a wife to be home on a certain day so her husband wouldn’t die alone in the garage. She told a father to keep his sons teddy close, for it would be the only thing he would have left of his child when the boy would die age three. She told the mailman that, when he saw the tree, to push down hard on the pedal. If he didn’t, the collision would be too weak, he would linger, painfully, for seven weeks. He would be begging for death by the end of the first. </p><p>It wasn’t much, but it was something, something that didn’t end with entire hospitals slaughtered in-</p><p>
  <em>Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. </em>
</p><p>Hemlock took a bite of her pastry, let it endure on her tongue, took a taste of her black coffee, bitter and sweet fusing.</p><p>She would be needed back at the retirement home soon.</p><p>Where else, with her gifts, would she work?</p><p>Where else, with Japan’s aging population, would she be?</p><p>She had stumbled into Musutafu quite by accident, haggard and drained from never staying in one place too long, hopping of the train at its very last stop, and she had planned for this to be exactly the same. Nevertheless, she had found a home in the bustling cityscape, running hot and cold and nowhere at all. It was full of glittering lights, and below a dark decaying underbelly.</p><p>Musutafu was a city that never slept.</p><p>Death did not sleep.</p><p>Neither did Hemlock.</p><p>Not anymore.</p><p>It was a match made in a mausoleum. Or it had been for the six months she had prowled these streets. </p><p>All until that fateful day in a coffee shop. </p><p>Hemlock downed the rest of her coffee, the burn itching down her throat, and pushed away the half-eaten danish.</p><p>She was getting sick of sweet things.</p><p>She left the shop as Himari went into the back rooms to ring her brother, the bell above the door chiming. </p><p>She stepped onto the curb, into the light, people rushing by, hectic to live their short, mayfly lives. </p><p>Hemlock took a deep breath in. </p><p>Fresh air, car oil, a woman's daisy perfume, and beneath it all, bone, birch and blood. </p><p>
  <em>Death. </em>
</p><p>Six thousand three hundred and forty seven people would die that day, in this one city, in one nation, on one planet spinning around a star that, too, one day would die. </p><p>Hemlock could feel it all, those six thousand three hundred and forty seven deaths. Tickles at the back of her mind, tiny hands clawing for help, begging for something <em>softer. </em></p><p>It was going to be a busy day. </p><p>
  
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Next Chapter: Hemlock finds a homeless man on deaths door in a dank alleyway, and decides, against her better judgement, to lend a helping hand...</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Nº0</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Chapter Warnings: Allusion to past torture (Non graphic), allusion to imprisonment, vague hints towards assisted suicide, mentions of birth-control, and depiction of homelessness.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p>There was an overwhelming sense of loneliness to Musutafu come night. A million souls slumbering away in their beds, high through the white cliffs of their windows.</p><p>As Hemlock Potter made her way through the back streets of a no name district, she thought of what surprises were shrouded by the pretty cosmopolitan camouflage.</p><p>She thought of electricity cables, steam swimming in pipes, water whooshing in channels and sewers, crackling fires in kitchens and abandoned cars, subway trains like neurons shooting across the city, lava in the guts, people hurrying through veined boulevards like blood.</p><p>In a way, a way no one liked to admit, a city was no different than a body.</p><p>Musutafu, if one carried the resemblance, was suffering from septicaemia.</p><p>
  <em>Poisoning itself.</em>
</p><p>She was on her way home from evening shift that night, carry-cup full of black coffee clasped between her gloved hand, another wrapped around the oak handle of a umbrella, shuffling towards a two-by-three apartment on the edges of the city. Her door number in the studio complex was <em>four.</em>     </p><p>That was funny.</p><p>Real fucking funny.</p><p>So funny, in fact, Hemlock couldn’t pass up the tongue in cheek irony, and had taken to living there for the last two months. The longest in the last two years she had slept under the same roof. </p><p>In Japanese four was pronounced Shi sometimes. Hemlock had learned that after she grew confused by the retirement home having no room four, only three and five, when she first began working there, and no fourth level in the hotel she had originally stayed in.</p><p>Shi, coincidently, also meant <strong>Death. </strong></p><p>No one wanted to invite<em> that</em> into their homes or their hospitals.</p><p>Someone should really inform her Landlord. Poor sod.</p><p>Hemlock was nearly home, just a block away, when she felt the tell-tale prickle behind her eyes, skirting across her brain, bursting like a overripe grape on the tip of her tongue, as heady as any wine.</p><p>Her grip tightened around the cup, leather gloves creaking in tension, around the umbrella shielding her from the chilly winter rain. She paused in the middle of the empty street, took a breath, and turned towards the dark and dank alley way to her left.</p><p>
  <em>There. </em>
</p><p>Her feet carried her down into the darkness, splashing through the odd puddle lurking in the dips of the narrow road.</p><p>She discovered the cause of the itch, a man, pushed up by a turned over dumpster, crumpled amongst the trash and litter, thrown out of society like that empty box of condoms by his barefoot. He did not look up at her sudden appearance, he merely let his neck roll in her general direction.  </p><p>He would have been pale below all the grime and muck crusted skin. His hair was a mop of greasy strings, grey and dim and old. His maroon t shirt and jeans were small, but on him they sagged pathetically, wrinkled and torn and shapeless like the petals of a wilted flower.</p><p>He sat there, huddled in the waste, numbed to the frigid rain, arms wrapped around jutting knees.</p><p>Hemlock looked at his face, that lonely,<em> spoiled</em> face, long and hard.</p><p>No one’s cheekbones should stick out so far.</p><p>No one’s eyes should be so sunken.</p><p>No one’s flesh should be so blue.  </p><p>She came closer, to the edge of the trash pile, feet padding softly against the flagstones, coffee still in hand, umbrella still open above her head, herself looking as if she was out for nothing but a September stroll.</p><p>His brown eyes followed her canary-yellow boots.</p><p>“You’re going to die.”</p><p>His gaze was slow to make its way up her legs, over her tights and coat and red scarf, landing on her own summer-green eyes peering out from the dark. He licked at his chapped lips. His tongue was a dreadful purple, shrivelled.</p><p>“You see me?”</p><p>Each word was fought for, each vowel a battle, and with it, the man notched a way into her chest, into the beating muscle between her ribs.</p><p>Hemlock placed her coffee down by her feet, carried her umbrella over to the man, and sat down in the trash with him, hip by hip, backs against the brick wall, shielding him as much as she could for the little while he had left.</p><p>Slowly, she reached out and placed a hand upon that skeletal knee.</p><p>He was so cold beneath her gloves. Sagged, and blue, and <em>cold.  </em></p><p>He jumped a little, as much as he could with his chin lolling on his knees, perhaps having forgotten what being touched felt like.</p><p>“You’re dying. Your organs are going to begin shutting off one by one in the next thirty minutes. In forty, you’ll experience cardiovascular failure. In fifty, you’ll be dead. It’s going to feel longer than that though. It’s going to feel like a lifetime, and it’s going to hurt.<em> Badly.</em> I’m so sorry.”</p><p>And she was incredibly remorseful.</p><p>It was not going to be a good death. It was not going to be <em>soft. </em></p><p>He didn’t deserve this. Not many people did. Nevertheless, what one deserved and what one <em>got</em> was not often the same thing, and this law was never more apparent then when it came to dying. </p><p>The man blinked over at her, nothing more. Perhaps he could not muster up anything else. Perhaps he knew this deep down all along when he had dragged himself to this alley to die a lonely, painful death in a heap of thrown out Kleenex and beer bottles.</p><p>“I feel cold. So… Cold.”</p><p>Hemlock nodded gently.</p><p>“That’s because oxygen isn’t getting into your blood properly. You’re going to find it hard to breathe in the next fifteen minutes. It’s going to get worse before the end.”</p><p>It might seem unkind, <em>cruel</em> even, to tell him these dreadful things, to not pat and soothe away the aches and pains with lies, but sometimes honesty made the passing easier Hemlock knew personally. Sometimes people needed to know what was coming, what blow was about to be struck, to help ease their fears.</p><p>At the essence of thanatophobia<em>, the fear of death</em>, was the panic of the unknown. By taking away that unknown element, as much as Hemlock could for those who could not feel death as she could, death became a little less scary. Lying, saying everything was going to be okay and it would feel like going to sleep, would only make them panic like a foal ripped from their mother’s side when the pain <em>did</em> come.</p><p>And the pain <em>would</em> come for this man. </p><p>Oh, how it would come. </p><p>Lying would make him linger.</p><p>That would make the death <em>hard. </em></p><p>“But you’re not alone. Not anymore. I’m here.”</p><p>
  
</p><p>They had been sitting in that alley for a few minutes now, precious seconds the man did not have spare, side by side in the November rain, and Hemlock knew this was where the tough part came.  </p><p>The <em>after. </em></p><p>Most of the time, Hemlock told them nothing. Most of the time, that was easier for the person. Most of the time-</p><p>Most of the time, people had someone to care for the <em>after</em>.</p><p>This man did not.</p><p>“They’ll find your body in three days. The woman in the apartment above us will complain of the rancid smell coming in from her bathroom window. They’ll think it’s only an overflowing garbage can. The binmen will find you here, amongst the trash, bloated and blue. They’ll take you to the morgue by evening. They’ll put you on show on a metal slab, and post notices in town, waiting for someone, anyone, to claim your body, to say they knew who you were. No one will come.”</p><p>A fly from the tip landed near his watery eye. The man did not flinch. He did not wince.</p><p>Perhaps he didn’t feel it at all.</p><p>Perhaps, as always, it was far too late.</p><p>“I didn’t expect death to wear yellow wellies.”</p><p>Hemlock glanced down to her feet, to her canary yellow wellington boots. A tiny dash of sunshine she had for a rainy day. Hemlock smiled tenderly, as delicate as her low voice.</p><p>“How else would I wade through the shit?”</p><p>The man chuckled, a barking noise followed swiftly by a wince and a groan. Hemlock was only glad she gave him one last moment of laughter before the clouds rolled in on an already dreary life.</p><p>“Are you?”</p><p>Now it was her turn to blink over at him.</p><p>“Am I what?”</p><p>He coughed; a cough escorted by a trickle of blood and a drawn out wheeze. His lungs were filling with fluid by now. Starvation weakened the immune system. Unfortunate bastard likely had pneumonia amongst a long list of infections ravaging him from the inside out.</p><p>“Death?”</p><p>Hemlock shook her head, damp curls whipping about her shoulders, smile still firmly in place.</p><p>“Afraid not. I just know our dear old friend a lot better than most would ever feel comfortable knowing.”</p><p>He moaned, neck straining. His kidneys were dying. Poisons were seeping back in where they didn't belong.</p><p>“Is this your Quirk then? You can see people’s deaths?”</p><p>Hemlock’s hand stiffened on the umbrella.</p><p>She didn’t talk about this.</p><p>Talking about this led to others talking about <em>this</em>, and that lead to people <em>hearing</em>, which, eventually, would lead back to the <em>Warden, </em>and the white rooms, and the whi-</p><p>
  <em>Don’t think about it! </em>
</p><p>But there was no Warden there. There were no white rooms. There was no Ward 13. She had gotten out. She had <em>escaped</em>. She was never going back <em>there</em> again. There was only she, an immortal, sitting next to a dying man, watching what she would never get to experience.</p><p>Who could he tell in the twenty-seven minutes he had left?</p><p>Who would listen to the man anyway? The man who had spent his life unseen? The man who would spend his death and his decaying much the same? Nameless and faceless, tossed out with the trash.</p><p>Much like how Hemlock had been thrown into Ward 13, scared, alone, confused-</p><p>He asked her if she saw him. She <em>did</em>. </p><p>So... Hemlock spoke. </p><p>
  
</p><p>“This is a…”</p><p>Hemlock stumbled over her words. She blamed her Japanese. She blamed the rain. She blamed everything but the truth.</p><p>She didn’t rightly<em> know</em> the full extent of her gift.</p><p>Her time in Ward 13 was spent trying to supress and remove-</p><p>Hemlock didn’t <em>know</em>. Not really. However, what she did know…</p><p>“This is a side effect of my gift-… My Quirk. A parlour trick in comparison. Nothing more, nothing less.”</p><p>The man coughed long and hard. It must have hurt enormously, all those spasms from a body eating itself.</p><p>“It must be… Lonely.”</p><p>His reply stalled her.</p><p>Lonely?</p><p>Not terrifying?</p><p>Not horrendous?</p><p>Not an abomination of nature?</p><p>It felt… Nice.</p><p>Nice to be seen. Nice to be heard. Nice not to be <em>feared.</em></p><p>Sluggishly, Hemlock nodded, patting at the skinny knee.</p><p>“Yes… Yes it is.”</p><p>Her gaze drifted away, to the wall opposite them, brick blighted with grime. It must have been equally nice, she thought, to be a part of that wall. Every brick had a place, each held up the next, fastened together in unity to make something strong.</p><p>Hemlock wasn’t a brick.</p><p>She was the crack down at the bottom weaving up like a thread from a spider’s web, cleaving like an open sore, threatening to tear the whole wall down.</p><p>Perhaps that was all she needed.</p><p>A little bit of cement.</p><p>Something to fasten herself closed and keep the wall standing.</p><p>For the first time in years, Hemlock told her truth to a man who could only take it to his grave.</p><p>“Where I’m from we classify Quirks corresponding to their capability for destruction. Those who were merely Person-Enders, those who could take a single life if pushed, were allowed to live outside amongst the populace. Under strict surveillance, of course. Others… People like… People like <em>me, </em>not so much. We were put into places called Wards. They said it was to stop us from hurting people. They told us they would help us get control of ourselves and our Quirks. They made it sound like a vacation home, where we could be ourselves.”</p><p>Her head tilted.</p><p>“I knew a man from my Ward. Number Seven.”</p><p>The man cut in, feeble and dimmer, a pond growing still and quiet and peaceful.</p><p>“Number seven?”</p><p>Hemlock’s gaze broke away from the wall, gliding back to the man.</p><p>“We weren’t allowed names in the Wards. They took those before you entered. Names mean you’re a person, and if you’re a person, they couldn’t-… They…”</p><p>It clogged up in her throat, a dense ball of iron, and she saw it all over again, those white rooms, those white beds, those white restraints, and the pale face of the smiling Warden as he-</p><p>Hemlock coughed and got a hold of herself.</p><p>The Warden was dead.</p><p>He couldn’t get to her anymore.</p><p>She had made damn well sure of that.</p><p>“Number Seven was what we called a City-Ender. He could boil the blood of anyone who walked on the same ground as him. Our numbers went backwards, you see. The closer to one, the more dangerous you were considered. The higher your Ward, the more cataclysmic your abilities were seen as. Seven’s Ward-… <em>My</em> Ward was thirteen, the highest, meant only for the worst of the worst."</p><p>The man’s knee trembled. Not long now.</p><p>“There were people more dangerous then him?”</p><p>Hemlock chuckled.</p><p>If only he knew. </p><p>That's when Hemlock decided. Before he died, one of many to die this night, this hour, this second, this man would know the truth. </p><p>As much of it as Hemlock could stomach spewing. </p><p>“Definitely. Seven was a big softie, really. He liked poetry. He even wrote me a few verses on scraps of toilet paper he managed to hide in the crack of his units wall. But, perhaps, that's a tale for another time. Those above six, five-to-one, were called Nation-Enders. Number Three, a small girl, could sink any country she drank water from. One sip from a tap or a shore or a brook was all she needed. Problem was she was terribly thirsty all the time. She was in the unit next to mine. I could hear her crying in the night… I sang her to sleep sometimes, after-… After the… The sessions.”</p><p>The word ripped itself out her throat like a thistledown bramble, burning like a lit coal, forcing its way into reality.</p><p>Hemlock wouldn’t speak about those, <em>the sessions</em>, not tonight, and perhaps not ever.</p><p>“And you?”</p><p>The man asked. He was a smart fellow. A good councillor, maybe, in another life, a kinder life. Hemlock dragged her hand away from his knee, placing down the umbrella to thumb at the edge of her leather glove.</p><p>The limb slipped free with a tug.</p><p>A pale hand in the dark alley. She spun her hand to show him the back.</p><p>Her scar, stretched across her knuckles, was pale now, white on white and the colour made her sick. <em>I Must Not Tell Lies. </em></p><p>It was fitting, Hemlock thought, for that scar to be right there of all places.</p><p>It did not tell lies.</p><p>The tattoo above it, a stain on the back of her hand taking up a majority of her flesh, a brand, a warning, was what she truly was.</p><p>
  <strong> <span class="u">Nº0</span> </strong>
</p><p>“Number Zero.”</p><p>
  
</p><p>“You’re not a Nation-Ender, are you?”</p><p>Hemlock smiled gently, stealing on her glove, flexing her fingers in leather and stitches. Once the mark was hidden, she could breathe again. </p><p>“They said I was a World-Ender. The first and only of my kind so far. The first and only of my kind they hope <em>ever</em> exists.”</p><p>Hemlock plucked up her umbrella, back to sheltering the man.</p><p>Her fingers tapped against the oak handle.</p><p>The mark on the back of her hand <em>burned. </em></p><p>Old pain for old stories.</p><p>In the end, that’s all anyone was.<em> Stories.</em></p><p>That made her own a little easier to tell.</p><p>“I produce, control, manipulate and distort… Death. That’s my Quirk. <em>Death. </em>I don’t need to touch you. I don’t need to look at you. I don’t need to be close to you. I don’t need to take anything of yours. I could be two cities over, and if I sense you… You’re gone. Everywhere I go, everyone I meet, everyone I pass or don’t pass, I see it all… A trillion souls and… The infinite times you should have died already, Hiroto.”</p><p>He blinked, she chuckled.</p><p>“Yes, I know your name. I knew it before I even walked into this alley. I’ve seen you die a thousand times already with each step I took, only saved by possibility. Those moments you didn’t look twice when you crossed the road. The day you took another route home, narrowly avoiding the manes explosion off Tobiyashi street. The time your mother debated whether she should take that morning after pill or not… And I see the million more to come. Ones you won’t live to see.”</p><p>She exhaled, her breath fogging like mist and smoke in the rain.</p><p>“Every moment is there for me to steal myself into. Past, present, and future. All those tiny deaths you thought you had gotten away from and I… I can make it happen. I could go back through your life, through all your little near-misses, or I could go forward, through the million to come, and I could choose one, a nice one, a bloody one, or make one of my own just for you.”</p><p>The rain fell harder around them, tap, tap, tapping on her umbrella.</p><p>“I could tell your mother to take that pill. She wouldn’t even know I was there. Just a little voice in her head, in her body, in her soul. No one would know. They simply do as I say, as I make them do. Puppets on strings. I could tell you to take that Tobiyashi street that fateful morning. I could force you to take that step off the curb. Or, I could whisper things,<em> bad</em> things, in those ears of yours, through months, years, decades, and see you take that step from a rooftop instead.”</p><p>A gurgle of a drain.</p><p>“I could make your final moments your worst nightmare. You would never see it coming because it would be too late. I'm already <em>in. </em>You would be long dead before this alleyway, before you ever crossed my path, time rewritten. Death doesn’t care about paradoxes, I’ve discovered. Your death could be coming years from now, and no one, not a soul, would ever know it was me… The girl in the yellow wellies.”</p><p>The man groaned, eyelids creeping down.</p><p>
  <em>Soon. </em>
</p><p>“That doesn’t sound like it could end the world.”</p><p>Hemlock nodded.</p><p>That was everyone’s mistake.</p><p>They couldn’t see the bigger picture.</p><p>“It doesn’t sound like it, does it?”</p><p>The man did not answer, but he did fight to stay looking at her.</p><p>“When my Quirk is <em>only</em> aimed at a person. I could do it to large groups too, and you forget something… People are not the only things that can <em>die.” </em></p><p>An itch on the back of her hand.</p><p>
  <em>I Must Not Tell Lies.</em>
</p><p>Hemlock doesn’t. Not anymore.</p><p>“Cities die. Countries die. <em>Worlds</em> die. Societies rise and fall and die like Rome. Where life is, death is never far behind. It’s the one universal truth to all this. Everything dies in the end. I see that too. I can <em>touch </em>that too. I smell a perfume I don’t like, I might just kill off the breed of Rose it came from before it ever propagated. Like dominoes, the ecosystem falls because something makes me sneeze.”</p><p>She let her hand skim the ground beneath them pointedly.</p><p>“I could feel the roads beneath my fingers, and see this city barely missing a catastrophe by volcanoes. I could change that. Make it erupt just a bit sooner. Make the Tsunami of 34’ a little bit higher. Make the Earthquake of 59’ just a bit stronger. I could make it so this place was never built. Only a wrecked ruin left.”</p><p>She shrugged.</p><p>“Or, I could take it further. What about Japan as a whole? I could, if I wanted, not make it two atomic bombs, but forty. I could see Japan, or France, or England, or any fucking country six feet deep below the ocean. I could make it so Pangea never split asunder, make it’s life a little longer, and ours a hell of a lot shorter. Death comes in all forms, for <em>everything. </em>From the bee to the highest skyscraper, everything ends, and it’s me who can choose how, where, when and why.”</p><p>Hemlock peered over the rim of her umbrella, over to the strip of foggy, nighttime sky. Atop the building, a tatty ribbon of fabric blew across, red like a comet ablaze.</p><p>“I will do you one better. How about the world? One day I could get bored of all this. I could turn my sights to the stars. You would see them go out one by one, and there would be nothing you could do. I could make it so they never formed at all. I’ve seen myself do just that, in different versions of people’s deaths.”</p><p>A groan, and Hemlock wasn’t sure whether it was from the dying man or her glove threatening to tear apart from her clenched fist.</p><p>“I’ve seen myself set countries at war with each other in mutually assured destruction. I’ve seen myself crack the moon like an egg. I’ve seen myself paint the world black, no light, no stars… And would you look at that, just one left.”</p><p>She faced him, the dying man.</p><p>She wasn’t smiling anymore.</p><p>“I’ve seen myself turn to our sun and make it <em>age. </em>It would take seconds, the briefest of moments, the softest of touches and, blink, suddenly there’s a dying star devouring Mercury and Venus, vaporising the moon into a spinning fireball, setting the world on<em> fire. </em>Gone. Finished. <em>Dead.</em> Perhaps I could, if the mood struck me, go a little further than that. Perhaps I would go back to the very beginning when the universe was tiny. Perhaps, when it begins to expand, I won’t let it. Perhaps, when that expansion starts to heat up, I’ll snuff that fire. Maybe there would never be a big <em>bang </em>to start with.”  </p><p>And the cruellest part of it all? Hemlock would be there in the end when nothing else was. <em>Alone.</em></p><p>She couldn’t die. Hemlock was immortal.</p><p>The Warden had seen to testing <em>that.</em></p><p>She was an immortal left traipsing around a crumbling, dying universe. The one death she couldn’t change or make, or transfer was her own because… Because she didn’t <em>have</em> one.</p><p>If there was a god somewhere out there, he sure as fuck was bad at making punchlines. Maybe, one day, she would <em>end </em>him too.</p><p>Everything ends, she had said to the dying man. It was the truth, but not all of it. All things end... Apart from <em>her.</em></p><p>
  <em>And wasn't that a dying shame?</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
</p><p>Anew, Hemlock shrugged, calm, collected, cool.</p><p>“I don’t much feel like burning our planet to a crisp just yet or have the asteroid that hit the dinosaurs come sailing back around again, so I guess we’re all a little lucky. Maybe one day though, when I’m tired of wading through the shit with my little yellow wellies.”</p><p>Her joke fell flat. Conceivably because it was no joke at all. Who knew what a hundred years sulking about this place would bring? A thousand more years? A millennia? Feasibly, it fell flat because she was telling it to a dying man.</p><p>Her only audience as of late.</p><p>That did awful things to one’s social skills.</p><p>“You won’t do that.”</p><p>For someone so cold, he sure spoke with such fire. Hemlock cocked a quizzical brow in his direction.</p><p>“How can you be so sure? My own friends weren’t.”</p><p>He smiled, eyes hollow, lips blue.</p><p>“You’re a kind person. A <em>good </em>person. The kind of person who saw a man hurting and came to sit next to him to hold his hand in the rain. That’s how I know.”</p><p>It had been a long time since anyone had called her good.</p><p>Hemlock held out her branded hand, palm up.</p><p>“What kind of death would you like? Any at all, anywhere, any when, anyhow. No further than 94 years though, I’m afraid. That’s all I can squeeze out for you without causing some rather… <em>Unfortunate </em>accidents for quite a few people.”</p><p>He coughed into his jeans. Red bled into the blue.</p><p>“Are they good years?”</p><p>She doesn’t lie.</p><p>“Good? Not at all. I’m afraid your one of the poor bastards who always gets the short end of the stick, and anything I could craft would not be pretty. But they <em>are </em>years, they <em>are </em>life… Of a style if you can stomach it. They’re yours if you want them. A parting gift from me to you.”</p><p>He grinned, determined.</p><p>“Worse than this? I don’t think so. No thanks. Maybe… Yes. Maybe no life at all. It wasn’t like I really had one to begin with. I don’t think I’ll miss it.”</p><p>Hemlock knew what he spoke of. She could almost taste it on her tongue. She knew he would choose this the moment she asked, knew she would do it too, knew as she always knew.</p><p><em>Terribly. </em> </p><p>His withered hand lifted, shook horribly, and reached and-</p><p>Dropping into his life felt like slipping into warm silk.</p><p>
  
</p><p>She finds the moment quickly. A spark in the dark, right on the edge. Abruptly, Hemlock’s there, in a dingy bathroom, right at the beginning stages of a life about to come. She straightened from hunching over the sink, peered into the bathroom mirror above the taps.</p><p>A stranger’s face stared back.</p><p>A woman.</p><p>Tired, puffy-eyed, someone who would have been beautiful if life had been kinder, <em>softer,</em> twenty years ago.</p><p>The blister pack in her hand crinkled.</p><p>She was dithering.</p><p>Unsure.</p><p>She searched for an answer in her own reflection.</p><p>Hemlock does not control the body.</p><p>She does not force this, but she is there, right in the heart of it, side by side, watching through the eyes of the woman. Her, but not really. A parasite riding along for the show.</p><p>The soon to be mother.  </p><p>The woman reached over, went to throw the blister pack away in the trash can of the toilet.</p><p>Hemlock whispered.</p><p>“Take the pill.”</p><p>The homeless man, at this stage of his life, would be nothing more than a miniscule cluster of cells splitting. No bigger than her pinkie nail. No thought. No feeling. No brain or heart or much of anything.</p><p>He was not alive yet.</p><p>But the cells were.</p><p>Cells Hemlock could <em>smother </em>and stop the life before it began<em>.</em></p><p>The woman froze, blinked at her reflection dazedly, and then promptly popped the foil, tipped her head back, dropped the pill, swallowed and-</p><p>
  
</p><p>Hemlock was back in the alley. Her hand fell through nothing, onto the concrete and littered trash. The homeless man was gone.</p><p>He had never been there to begin with.</p><p>He had never been born.</p><p>Reworked and revised.</p><p>The saddest part? The world, without his existence, had not changed one single bit. Not one life, one death, one marriage, one dog, one summer, one fucking parking ticket.</p><p>Nothing had changed.</p><p>
  <em>What a world to live in, eh?</em>
</p><p>Hemlock stood, shook out her umbrella, plucked up her cold coffee, and left the alleyway. She paused at the mouth into the main street when she felt the itch. She glanced over her shoulder. Up to the roof. Up to that tatty fabric. </p><p>
  <em>I really wouldn't do it if I were you.</em>
</p><p>Hemlock didn't glance back again. </p><p>There was nothing to look back to.</p><p>She was the only one to ever know Hiroto had lived once upon a time.</p><p>
  <em>We're all just stories in the end. </em>
</p><p>Hiroto wouldn't even have that, but Hemlock would know, and Hemlock would remember, and perhaps someplace, somewhere, sometime, that would be enough. </p><p>She disappeared down the street.</p><p>
  
</p><p> The ragged streak of red fabric above the apartment moved. A shadow jumped down into the alley, hand on sword hilt, staring at the place the girl had been sitting alone.</p><p>
  <em>Alone? </em>
</p><p>No, not alone, there had been-</p><p>He couldn’t remember.</p><p>How could he not remember?</p><p>He remembered what she had said to herself, ranting madly at nothing, and-</p><p>
  <em>You would never see it coming because it would be too late. I'm already <strong>in.</strong> You would be long dead before this alleyway, before you ever crossed my path, time rewritten.</em>
</p><p>She <em>hadn’t</em> been speaking to herself.</p><p>Someone had <em>been </em>there, beside her.</p><p>Someone had <em>died. </em></p><p>Died long before they could come to the alley, and he could not remember because, to him, there had been no other person.</p><p>She had… <em>rewritten</em> it<em>. Changed</em> it. Altered time and life and death and memory on her own <em>whim.</em></p><p>There was nothing else for it.  </p><p>The figure lumbered down the alley following the little yellow wellies.</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>When I said overpowered, I meant OVERPOWERED lol. But I would just like to say this Quirk does have weaknesses, so does Hemlock, that come into play later. She's immortal but she's not invincible. I can't go too much into the Quirk weakness's without giving spoilers, but I will say that though there is no way to kill Hemlock in this fic, there is a way to trap her. </p><p>Hemlock is a Witch in this too, and with this type of Quirk she's severely lacking in combat/physical fighting. She's used to using magic and her Quirk, both arguably long range attacks, witches don't typically throw punches, so, say, if someone was to somehow survive long enough to get close enough to start swinging at her that's where she's going to come up short. </p><p>Lastly, I would also just like to quickly note that Magic and Quirks in this are completely different things. Again, no spoilers, but this will be explored throughout this fic. What happened in England, why, with Quirks so out there and open in the world, Wizards and Witches are still in hiding, and why only Hemlock is the one to know about the Wards will be explained later. I will say this and only this: Hemlock doesn't belong here. Take what you will from that, and I'm looking forward to hearing your theories! </p><p>Sorry for the awfully long note. It won't happen again. I just wanted to clear up some confusion. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and I will hopefully see you all again soon!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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